Modern commerce is increasingly dependent on transporting goods using carriers as society embraces more and more online shopping. For example, modern consumers are increasingly using online shopping and common carriers for delivering wine, prescription medication, food, and sensitive electronic devices. To assist in tracking and monitoring the movement of sensitive and expensive goods, labels have been developed in the past that incorporate RFID communication and intelligence. In this way, at the point of shipment and throughout the major carriers, the good has the ability to be tracked. However, adoption of such RFID labels has been slow, as the equipment for initializing, loading, updating, and interrogating the label's RFID electronics is expensive, and typically only available at larger transfer points in the shipping transaction. Further, it is unlikely, and even rare, for the end consumer to be able to interact with the label. Since the consumer is a critical part of the delivery chain, and the consumer is excluded from participation in the information available on the label, the use of intelligent labels has been quite low and very ineffective in improving the customer experience.
A particularly difficult problem occurs when a product is shipped from the supplier to a consumer, and the consumer reports that the product is defective. For example, the consumer may complain that a screen on an electronic device is broken, which strongly suggests that its shipping package was subjected to a shock trauma. When the supplier receives a call from the consumer, the supplier has very limited information as to when the device was damage, how the device was damaged, or who had custody of the device when it was damaged. In one scenario, the consumer may have received a perfectly functioning device, and in the first few days of use dropped the device on the sidewalk. Even though the cause of the defect was the consumer, the consumer may be able to get a free replacement device because the supplier has no information to understand what really happened.